The first meeting between the president of Catalonia, Quim Torra, and the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, at the PM's official residence in Madrid, the Moncloa palace, is news in itself, since the last time a Catalan president visited the Moncloa, or the last time we know about, was on April 20th, 2016. Mariano Rajoy received Carles Puigdemont who had a list of 46 demands in his hand, one of them being an accord on an independence referendum. Rajoy's response was a flat 'no' to the vote and another much quieter 'no' to the other 45 items on the list.
Since then, the Moncloa has had its 'no' set to automatic pilot, despite leaving the political response in the hands of the judges. The result is well known: application of article 155, suppression of Catalonia's government, Parliament and autonomy; the calling of new Catalan elections, jailing and exile of leaders, and, above all, the overriding idea of teaching the independence movement a lesson that it would not forget in a long time. There was only one 'but' in this sequence: the election called for December 21st, which the independence movement won, demonstrating a capacity for resilience much greater than normal and tearing to shreds the script that had been planned.
Thanks to that, Quim Torra arrived at the presidency of the Catalan government, with a roadmap to make the republic effective and to fulfill the mandate of the referendum of 1st October last year. It would be out of place to expect any movement that would facilitate all of this from Pedro Sánchez this Monday in his first interview with the Catalan president. On the other hand, what we should expect is for all the discrepancies to be placed on the table, even the most thorny of them.
We should expect this because politics consists of, among other things, the management of expectations. And the ball is now in the court of Pedro Sánchez, who arrived at the Moncloa by accident. And who wants to last until mid-2020, which is when the next elections are due. And without the votes of the Catalan pro-independence parties this is impossible. For this reason, Sánchez has to make a move. In public or in private.